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VIVictor Borge actually improvised on Monti’s Czardas with Anton Kontra on the violin (1970s) as part of an unplanned encore.
Borge jokes that he “knows the tune but has never played it before,” and somehow that makes what follows even more unbelievable. He reacts to Kontra in real time, sculpting an accompaniment on the spot. Indeed, improvisation used to be part of the classical training and somehow got lost today.
Kontra, for his part, alternates between angelic harmonics, blistering spiccato and wide smiles as Borge constantly ambushes him with new ideas. The moment where Kontra leans forward in an exaggerated cue for the shift to major - and Borge answers with that guilty-child grin
— is so wholesome! You can see the orchestra behind them smirking, bursting of laughter.
What makes this even more astonishing is that Monti’s Csárdás is already a minefield: sudden changes of tempo, gypsy rubato, the slow lassú blooming into the fiery friss, dizzying runs, ricochet bowing, wide slides...
But behind the comedy stands real pedigree. Victor Borge, born Børge Rosenbaum in Copenhagen in 1909, was a prodigy trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Music and encouraged by Carl Nielsen himself. He fled Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1940 because of his Jewish heritage, rebuilt his career in the United States, and became one of the greatest musical entertainers of the century: Kennedy Center Honoree, record-breaking one-man shows, and a pianist whose phrasing and timing were as refined as his humor. His comedy was never decoration — it was built on musical mastery.
Anton Kontra, often overshadowed in this video by Borge’s flamboyance, was himself a phenomenal violinist. Born in Hungary in 1932 and raised in the Kodaly tradition, he was a student of Ede Zathureczky, placing him in the Hungarian violin lineage of Jenö Hubay. A child prodigy who performed with the Budapest Gypsy Symphony Orchestra, he later became a leading violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra and a founding member of the Kontra Quartet.
Curated by @ violinarchives
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